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2017.06.06

New treatment improves prostate cancer survival

A combination of two existing prostate cancer therapies could extend lives of men with advanced, high-risk prostate cancer, a study showed.

The addition of Zytiga to androgen-deprivation therapy can "significantly" increase overall survival in men with newly diagnosed, metastatic, castration-sensitive prostate cancer, concluded the STAMPEDE trial team funded by the Cancer Research UK.

The findings were presented at the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago and published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Saturday.

Unlike chemotherapy which kills cancerous cells, abiraterone, also known as Zytiga, is a hormone therapy that stops more testosterone from reaching the prostate gland to curb the tumor's growth.

The trial was conducted with 2,000 patients, in which half of the men were treated with hormone therapy while the other with hormone therapy and abiraterone. There were 184 deaths in the combination group compared with 262 in those given hormone therapy alone.

"These are the most powerful results I've seen from a prostate cancer trial -- it's a once in a career feeling. This is one of the biggest reductions in death I've seen in any clinical trial for adult cancers," said Professor Nicholas James, chief investigator of the STAMPEDE trial from the University of Birmingham.